by Sam Giancana
Throughout it all, Mooney remained unscathed, although the detectives hauled him in for questioning almost daily. The Giancana family’s lives changed dramatically in response to Mooney’s presence; 42 smartheads such as “Tumpa” Russo and “Fat Leonard” Caifano started to come around to visit over a plate of pasta. Most of the time, the children lived on a tightrope, captive to Mooney’s new role as head of the household, his radical mood swings, and seesaw outbursts. And, whenever there was a robbery or shootout in the news, they came to anticipate the inevitable knock at their door.
Their father maintained a low profile; when Mooney set up a still in the basement of their home, Antonio, without the merest hint of agitation, ran it. There was little the older man could do. Like the other immigrants dominated by gangland rule, he resigned himself to the steamy odor of sour mash that hung throughout their flat and gladly took the few dollars Mooney threw his way as token payment. In some strange way, he even began to admire Mooney. His neighbors praised his son for his guts and street smarts, his catlike way of always landing on his feet, and Antonio found himself feeling a surge of pride at the mention of Mooney’s name.
Things were going along smoothly from Mooney’s point of view until July, when he and two other 42s, Joey Sypher and Dominic Caruso, came up with the idea of burglarizing an expensive north side dress shop. In the dead of night, they broke in and got away with over fifty dresses. Pulling out into the street, they were spotted by coppers patrolling the area.
The chase was what Mooney lived for, what he loved more than anything he could think of. More than banging mick girls in the backseat of a car or whores up on Michigan, he loved the opportunity it provided to prove his prowess as a wheelman. With Mooney at the wheel, the trio sped off, with the police car in hot pursuit. He finally lost control of the car. “The only time in my life,” he would tell friends. Mooney managed to get away on foot. Caruso and Sypher, however, were nabbed and, under questioning, broke down.
The next morning, while the eight Giancana children were gathered for breakfast, hungrily eating their bread and coffee, the knock on the door came. Mooney was sitting, bleary-eyed, at the head of the table, holding the smallest child—three-year-old Chuck—in his lap while drinking a cup of coffee. At the sight of the officers, he stood up, handed the little boy to his stepmother, and gave Antonio a hard look. Without saying a word, he let the detectives make their arrest and lead him off to jail.
Down at the station house, he was charged with burglary; bond was set at five hundred dollars. Antonio had understood what Mooney’s look meant; he was to get the money from Diamond Joe Esposito to post bond and pay off the coppers. He did exactly that and soon his son was back home and ready to hit the streets again.
As repayment to Esposito, Mooney gratefully drove a sugar shipment to Louisville. Once there, he cooled his heels in seedy bars and on the riverboat city’s sidewalks while waiting for a return shipment of Kentucky bourbon whiskey.
Kentucky coppers, like those in Chicago, were always on the lookout for suspicious types, and Mooney Giancana, a fast-talking Italian, stuck out in their slow-moving town like a horse with knickers. Mooney was picked up as a vagrant and later released. A few days later, he got his carload of booze and hightailed it out of town. The experience left a bad taste in his mouth; he always hated Kentucky after that, saying it was full of dull-witted degenerates, lazy shines, and coppers who could be bought too cheap.
Back in Chicago, the air took on a crispness indicative of the coming fall. Antonio no longer peddled his lemon ice, mammoth watermelons, and ripe tomatoes, but squashes and dried fruits instead. Wagons laden with coal creaked up and down the streets of the Patch and residents chattered like squirrels as they scampered to and fro, gathering the necessities required for survival during the harsh Chicago winters.
For Mooney, it was business as usual. There were the runs for Esposito, the calls to drive McGurn, the nightclubs where he wore expensive suits and flashed wads of cash while giving fast girls with blond bobs long looks. And naturally, there were the 42 heists.
Late one night in mid-September of 1926, he and two other 42s, Diego Ricco and Joe Pape, were sitting in a club, bemoaning their boredom, when they suddenly got the idea to hit a store in the brothel district of the infamous Levee. To Mooney, such jobs were as much for the thrill as for the cash they brought. He drove and served as lookout on most heists and jumped at the chance that night to demonstrate his getaway skills, whipping corners and laying rubber.
The robbery backfired miserably. Everything was going fine, Mooney would later recall, until the crazy shopkeeper, a man named Girard, decided to be a hero and went for a gun. With that, all hell broke loose and gunfire was exchanged, bringing scores of people running toward the shop and wounding both Pape and Girard. The trio managed to make their getaway, but the next morning the detectives were knocking at the Giancana door, arrest warrants in hand, thanks to a witness, Alex Burba. Girard, the foolhardy shopkeeper, had died and Mooney, Pape, and Ricco were jailed. Bond was set at $25,000 on charges of robbery and murder.
Antonio received an envelope stuffed with cash from Diamond Joe Esposito and once again, money in hand, trudged down to the station house to win Mooney’s release. The trial was scheduled for April of the following year.
Out on bail and at home, the strain began to show. Mooney became more aggressive with the children, as well as with Antonio. He largely ignored Mary, his stepmother, although he seemed to brighten at four-year-old Chuck’s antics and didn’t try to hide that the small rough-and-tumble boy was his favorite.
Like the rest of the neighborhood, Mooney was both impressed and amused by the little guy’s sassiness and daring, his fearless acrobatics on the curbs and street corners. Not a day passed that Chuck could not be found swinging precariously from electrical wires, jumping from stoops and second-story rooftops, or dashing into the street to make a game of dodging the constant stream of carts and cars—behavior that drove Chuck’s mother to near distraction as she anxiously watched for speeding cars and gangland whippers.
In October, Chuck’s daring would lead to tragedy. The four-year-old was playing in the street when a car barreled down on him. Ever alert, Mary ran from the stoop to save her child. Most certainly, he would have been killed if it hadn’t been for what she did next. In one of those rare moments—when what a person is truly made of crystallizes—Mary Leonardi Giancana ran directly into the path of the car and threw her son, with every bit of strength she had, across the street. Within seconds, she was dead, dragged over a block by the speeding car. Three days later, she was buried. And Chuck was left with guilt instead of a mother.
Mary’s funeral flooded Mooney with memories he’d never realized still slept within him: his own mother’s eyes, her soft, comforting voice, the emptiness he’d felt so long ago. The feelings aroused in him an emotion long dead, one unfamiliar to him during his years as a 42. An affection stirred, stronger than ever, for four-year-old Chuck, who was standing by his side. Mooney tightened his grip on the little boy’s hand. They had a kinship; they shared this loss. What had followed in his own life after his mother’s death, all the brutality and pain, Mooney would never allow to touch this little boy. There had been no one to protect Mooney when his mother died. But he could change that for this child. He would protect him from all the madness, push him in a different direction from the one he’d chosen. Chuck wouldn’t grow up to be a common greaseball, not now, not with him at his side.
Mooney stayed close to home over the next months. He quietly and solemnly watched Chuck as he reflected on his own mother—her face now no more than a vague memory.
In December, the dress shop burglary trial came up and Mooney and Caruso were acquitted for lack of evidence, but Sypher got one to ten years. A darkness still enveloped Mooney’s days; he had the trial for murder to contend with in April. The possibility of prison and the electric chair haunted him at night when he fell asleep on the sofa and greeted him with the s
unrise. There was no way he would allow either to occur; and therefore, he came up with a plan to make sure of it.
As the 1927 winter turned to spring, and the murder trial date drew near, Mooney launched an intimidation campaign against the only witness who could testify against them, Alex Burba. First, he and Ricco tried husky-voiced phone calls and whispered sinister threats—aH with no effect. When this failed, they redoubled their efforts, the three driving over together to pay Burba “a little visit” at his soda shop. But the man remained steadfast. The trial date was only days away when Mooney decided to resort to bribery—offering Burba two thousand dollars in cash to keep his mouth shut. Still, he wouldn’t back down. As Mooney saw it, they had no other choice at that point but to “kill the stupid bastard.” And on the evening of April 20, at Mooney’s bidding, Diego Ricco went back to Burba’s shop alone and plugged him twice—once in the shoulder and once, a fatal wound, in the back of the head. No one came forward to finger them in Burba’s death, and ten days later the Girard case was dropped for lack of evidence. Mooney’s spirits lifted.
Things went back to normal and he started driving fast and hanging out with the guys at Bonfiglio’s again. In the smoky pool hall, while his fellow 42 members grumbled about Joey Colaro’s leadership, his rules against girls and guns, his heavy-handed domination, Mooney had his own ideas. Abiding by the rules set by Colaro no longer concerned him; there were other, more important men to reach and he thought he was almost there. Driving for McGurn had put him among the Capone gang and impressing them was all that mattered now. Once he made it with those guys, he’d bring his own band with him: Fat Leonard Caifano; Needles Gianola; Fiore “Fifi” Buccieri; “Willie Potatoes” Daddano; Sam “Mad Dog” DeStefano; “Milwaukee Phil” Alderisio; Chuckie Nicoletti, and the English brothers, Chuck and Butch.
Scanning the room, Mooney saw what would become the underworld’s future, its “Youngbloods.” The other thing he saw was an empire.
While other people were still heralding the May transatlantic flight of Lindbergh, Mooney’s attention was fixed on other concerns, specifically, removing any obstacles in his path to leadership. And as fate—assisted by an anonymous phone call made by Mooney to the police—would have it, Mooney’s one stumbling block to control of his fellow 42s—Joey Colaro—was gunned down in November. The press described the event as the “end of the 42s.” Mooney described it as his “lucky break.”
His next big break came when he got a call from the Capone gang in March of 1928. Most men might have shunned the request, might have wanted no part in the betrayal. But Mooney readily, eagerly complied.
He stood in the telephone booth, collar turned up on his topcoat, and stared vacantly out the dirty plate-glass window at the people milling around the aisles of Chesrow’s Drugstore. Then he turned his back and dialed, glancing over his shoulder one last time before covering the mouthpiece with a crisp white handkerchief. His muffled voice echoed against the booth’s wood-paneled walls when he spoke, his words pouring out in a low snarl. “Get outta town or get killed,” he said to the man on the line, the man who had saved him from petty gangs and petty crime and starvation on the streets. Then he smiled a cruel smile and hung up the phone.
CHAPTER 3
Among the branches of the budding hedges, a lone mockingbird chirped the final notes of its evening song. Nearby, a sleek black roadster lingered along the curb, camouflaged by the nightfall. Stealthily, almost imperceptibly, it had been edging forward. At the wheel, a young man, oily black hair slicked back and a cigarette drooping from his lips, smiled as his passengers nodded at their approaching victim.
Unaware, Diamond Joe Esposito walked to his death with arrogance, swaggering confidently down the sidewalk toward his assassins—his jowls jiggling up and down as he chewed on a smoldering fat cigar. His bodyguards, the Varchetti brothers, seemed nervous, glancing from side to side.
The car fairly twitched in anticipation, its engine racing ever so slightly. The exhilaration of the coming kill quickened the driver’s pulse; he longed to spring forward, but waited for his moment. When it came, he shifted the car into gear and lunged with a guttural roar toward the man.
Diamond Joe cried, “Oh my God!” at the sight of the oncoming gunmen and, instead of shielding their charge, the Varchettis fell to the ground.
Riveting machine-gun fire caught the padrone first in the chest, and his eyes registered fear as he stared knowingly into the driver’s face for one brief second before falling forward, succumbing to the gnawing bullets that tore at his flesh. The hot lead ate through him, chewing the layers of clothing and fat—ripping them into open, flapping pieces of skin. Another round pitted and splattered what remained. Convulsing in a foam of blood, his arms and legs jerked spastically.
The driver paused long enough to watch Esposito’s wife, Carmello, rush from her home. “Oh my God, is it you, Giuseppe? I’ll kill them for this, I’ll kill them!” she screamed, and threw herself on her husband’s mutilated corpse.
The car sped off, swerving in the distance and—with brakes shrieking victoriously—rounded a corner, disappearing from sight.
Before he was gunned down in March of 1928, fifty-six-year-old Esposito had been a mentor to Mooney and hundreds of other boys languishing on street corners—as well as a benefactor to a great many struggling Italian families. He’d passed out 2,500 turkeys each year at Thanksgiving, played Santa Claus to the children of the Patch, and supported the local Italian charities.
Despite these philanthropic endeavors, Antonio Giancana, like many of his fellow immigrants, believed it was “a service his enemies have done this neighborhood . . . a service to rid us of such bloody tyrants as Diamond Joe.”
But in the Patch, there were always new tyrants to replace the old, new rules to follow and lessons to learn. Carving out a life in the sprawling Italian section was difficult at best. The only apparent route to a better future, the only hope to escape the poverty, was a life of crime—and even then, the more ambitious, like Mooney, recognized power was not handed down; it was taken.
With Esposito out of the way, Capone eyed illicit operations throughout the entire Midwest; he began consolidating the ragtag assortment of south side gangs and made plans to eliminate his north side competitors. He and Paul Ricca continued Esposito’s political friendships, hoping to extend the gang’s influence still further.
Viewed more as a public servant than a criminal, Capone gave the people of Chicago what they wanted—booze, sex, and gambling—and his popularity in the city soared.
Capone’s consolidation of power meant more power for his loyal followers. And Mooney was fast to take advantage of his own dominance in the Patch. In April 1927, he got another chance to prove his worth to Capone during the Republican party primary.
Incumbent Mayor Thompson was being challenged by what the Capone forces derided as a “do-gooder,” Senator Charles Deneen. It was critical to the gang’s operations that Thompson remain in power, and they made every effort to see to it that the appropriate number of vote floaters—people who went from precinct to precinct voting again and again—were out on the streets on the day of the primary.
But the Twentieth Ward had the gang worried; Thompson’s political crony Morris Eller was being challenged by Octavius Granady, and rumor had it that the black attorney might actually win.
Mooney got the word to get rid of Granady—“the upstart, moolie, shine troublemaker”—on the morning of the election. Later that day, as the polls were closing, Granady was shot to death by four men in a sedan.
Morris Eller remained in power and Mooney was taken in for questioning but released—“Of course,” he would later say.
Three months later, in June of 1928, Mooney Giancana was twenty years old, and every man, woman, and child in the neighborhood not only feared him but revered him, as well. His recent scrapes with the law, the murders he was known to have committed, his brutal intimidation tactics—all became legendary. Rather than diminish his statu
re, the stories the immigrants whispered among themselves only served to make the swaggering Mooney a larger-than-life figure. To the Italians, hoods like Mooney who’d roamed the streets as youths and now were pulling themselves up by the bootstraps to achieve financial success were simply symbols of a dream come true.
And you had to have a dream to get by in the Patch.
Mooney’s little brother, five-year-old Chuck, didn’t think any of the thousands of poor, uneducated immigrants who littered their neighborhood had a dream—at least not one like his.
He liked to pretend he was someone else—and ever since Mooney and Fat Leonard had taken him to see his first cowboy picture, he’d thought Tom Mix would be a good choice as a hero. But the best hero of all was Mooney. To Chuck, Mooney, at twenty, was a bona fide adult. Mooney came and went as he pleased. He had money and respect; he could even smart-mouth their peddler father and get away with it.
As long as Chuck could remember, the bigger boys had spoken with unabashed reverence of Mooney and the 42 gang. Sometimes Chuck and the other kids would congregate on the stoop to watch the neighborhood men, fueled by homemade wine, play craps under the streetlight. One of the men served as a lookout for the Irish coppers who roamed the streets, ever ready to grease the patrolmen’s palms if necessary, while the others rolled the dice, laughing and swearing in turn. Even they discussed his brother Mooney, and though Chuck couldn’t always make out the exact words, their tone conveyed respect.
Chuck pretended not to pay attention to the bigger boys’ whisperings as he checked his shoes for scuff marks, methodically rubbing each one off with the plaid patch on his sleeve. But in truth, he listened, enraptured, to their narration of his brother’s escapades. They said the newspapers called Mooney the generalissimo of the 42, that he’d killed at least fifty men for Diamond Joe and Capone without blinking an eye—and they played games trying to name them all: “There’s the one guy on the train tracks; there’s the politician, Granady; there’s . . .” And they reenacted heists and shootouts, describing in vivid detail the accompanying car chases.